Amanda Blackwood - The Survivor

Amanda Blackwood is a trauma recovery mentor public speaker podcaster and has authored over a dozen books. Much of the help that she offers others comes from the experience of overcoming her own trauma. She's my guest on Bleeding Daylight today. Amanda, thank you so much for your time.

trafficking. And while these things all kind of do get combined, occasionally, one does not necessarily equal the other. A lot of people automatically assume that human trafficking and exist only in the world of

children being kidnapped by total strangers in windowless vans, when the kidnap scenario of human trafficking is incredibly rare. It's actually only about 15% of all human trafficking cases, people don't realize that people that are being trafficked or being trafficked by a lot of times their own relatives or loved ones, family members, moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents, nieces and nephews, well traffic their own

uncles and aunts. It's a bizarre, almost incestuous world when it comes to human trafficking. When I was trafficked the first time it was by a boyfriend and when I was trafficked the last time it was by a man that I had known for seven years and was engaged to be married to.

living like that trauma becomes such a huge part of your identity that sometimes it eventually gets really difficult to kind of separate out who you are from the trauma. And you believe that that is what your life is all about. And that's exactly why I do what it is that I do now, helping other people to fight back against their own trauma reactions. Because what happened to us doesn't define us what we do with it afterward, is what we need to focus on.

didn't believe me. They didn't want to believe me. My earliest molester was actually my older brother. who at the time was only seven. So if I tried to tell anybody, I felt at four years old that not only was I going to get my brother in trouble, but I was going to be in trouble too, because I took part in this. So there was already this really early, self blame, I have to contribute some of that to my mother

early on. Because she was the person who continually told me that if there's something wrong, that there has to be a common denominator, and that person had to be me. She's the one who taught me that if there was something that was going on, that was inappropriate, that I need to take my own portion of the the blame for whatever it was. So I couldn't tell people about what my brother was doing. He was only seven, first

of all, and when I look back on it, I recognize now that there's no way that he should have known how to do the things that he was doing, and that somebody else had to teach him. He claimed for many years, and probably still does, that he doesn't have any recollection of our childhood at all. before the age of 18, he remembers nothing, which is a very clear trauma response that even he isn't aware of. But there had to be

something that was going on in the background that made him need to explore this to understand what was going on. I know better now than to shoulder the blame for it. But even knowing now what I know, it's sometimes very difficult to sit back and recognize that this is a part of my past. It doesn't define who I am. And it was never my fault. No matter how old I was, or how young I was, when things were happening. The first

time I was trafficked, I was actually 18 years old. One of the first questions I usually get is people asking me well, how old were you when this happened? Because they usually assume again that I was a child because it only happens to kids. Only one quarter of all victims worldwide are under the age of 18. So when I was trafficked the first time at 18 years old, I didn't know that it was called trafficking because it's

not something that people really talked about back then this was 1998. I was traffic the second time when I was 19. The third time I was trafficked, I was actually 31 years old, I had been in a long distance relation with this relationship with this man, off and on for a period of seven years before he asked me to get a fiancee visa, and move overseas to be with him. And then it took him seven days to start trafficking

me. Another one of the questions that I commonly get is How can this happen to you so many times, as if people are expecting me to learn my lesson from the first event. But if we reframe that, and we were to ask that same question to somebody who was a rape victim, what kind of a question are we asking? We are absolutely putting the blame back on the victim here. The average number of times that this person gets trafficked

once they've been trafficked, the first time is seven times. Because we build these neuro synapses. And we create these patterns of behavior. We continually gravitate toward what is familiar, because we're looking for these patterns. This is hardwired into us as human beings. Sadly, this still happens with unhealthy situations as much as it does with the healthy situations. But the average lifespan of somebody in trafficking is also

seven years. So at the end of seven years of somebody being trafficked, they typically die of an overdose, or alcohol poisoning, or beaten to death or starve to death, where they commit suicide. And that's probably the most common way out. And as

not so much for me because I'm expecting it these days, but I can't fault her for that either. Kids don't come with instruction manuals. When you're a parent. You want to do the best you can with your kid. You try your best, and sometimes you get a little overwhelmed. I think my mother was quite overwhelmed. She was quite young when she had us. She didn't know how To do it, she grew up in a dysfunctional home herself with

physical abuse from what I can understand, but she didn't really talk about it. And she was passing that on, by not understanding how to be a more functional parent. She didn't know how to be more involved and how to recognize these signs because she didn't want to recognize these signs. She was living in a state of denial, because she couldn't protect her child. What kind of a mother was she? I don't blame her for what

happened to me. She didn't know. And she couldn't have known. But if she had known, I have to believe she would have done something.

after another. One of the guys that I got involved with was more than twice my age. And he asked me to move in with him. There was a friend of his who came over one day and wanted to know if we would go with him to Las Vegas for a birthday weekend. Well, this boyfriend of mine at the time, decided that he couldn't go he had work to do. But there was nothing that said I couldn't go the way it was presented to me, I was going

to get an all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas, Nevada for a weekend. And I'd been to Las Vegas before. And while I knew that I couldn't gamble at such a young age, I was still only 18. I did know that they had other entertainment, including a roller coaster at the top of New York, New York, and we got on the plane. And this buddy of my boyfriend had my ID card, I didn't have a driver's license, he said that he was going

to hang on to it for safekeeping and keep it with the tickets just to make sure that everything was safe. When we got to the hotel, the hotel staff was instructed that they were to bring me room service once a day if I called. But when they brought it up, they were to drop it off outside the door. They were to leave before I was allowed to collect it. And they were not supposed to ask any questions. I was told

that if I walked out of the hotel room, I would not be allowed back in because I didn't have a room key. I didn't have my own ID. I had no money, and I had nowhere to go. So I was stuck in this hotel room for the next 52 hours. And before we ever left, my boyfriend told me that I needed to be accommodating. And at the time, I didn't quite understand what he meant. But his buddy during the next 52 hours made it very

abundantly clear what that meant through the use of force fraud or coercion. I was forced into sex acts that to this day haunt me I had to put up with it. I couldn't leave. Because I had nowhere to go. I couldn't walk out because I had no ID. I had to put up with it for 52 hours until we got back to Arizona. And I could collect my belongings and get out of there. And even then it took me a little while because I still needed to

find a place to stay. I was a high school dropout with no college education. I was working at a gas station. And I somehow made my way out to Arkansas where my mother's family was from. I was trying to get away from these people that had done this to me, which at the time again, I didn't realize that it was called trafficking. I didn't know that for many, many years. But I've made it out to Arkansas, married a man

again, it was more than twice my age. And he turned out to be abusive. And my attempts to get away from him. I got a job at a horse farm, injured myself on the farm and needed to have a knee surgery. Again, trying to run away from my problems. I had built up this behavior of running away starting when I was 15 years old, and not telling people the truth. I started that when I was four. So this pattern continued. I ran away from my

ex husband and went to Florida to stay with my dad's mother. I was supposed to go down there and stay with her for a little while. Get my knee surgery, get back on my feet. And then I would be back on my own and I'd be fine. But here it was 1030 at night at the Daytona Beach Bus Station in Florida. I called my girl On mother to let her know that I was there and ready to be picked up to come and stay at her house. And her

husband answered the phone, my grandfather, Vic, and instead of coming to pick me up, they told me that they would not be coming to collect me. I was on my own, and they wished me luck. At 1030 at night in a strange city with $5 to my name. I sat down on the curb and I started crying. And a young couple came up and found me and asked me what was wrong so blubbering and sobbing, I told them the story about I'm stuck there,

I've got nowhere to go, I've got no family left. I'm lost. I'm alone, I'm hungry. And this young couple said that they would take me in and give me a place to stay until I could get on my feet. But what they really meant was, they would give me a place to stay until they could find the highest bidder. And they sold me to some guy named Esteban. It was locked up for 23 and a half hours in a small room with no food, no

water, no bathroom facilities. Thanks to a TV show here in the US during the 80s and 90s, that I grew up watching called MacGyver. I managed to get out of there. And I didn't stop running. I took off, I never looked back to see what happened to the other people that I knew were in that same building that I was held in. I didn't go back for them. I didn't try to fight. I just ran. I ran for my life. And I was terrified.

It took me 20 years to try to look it up to see if anything ever happened with that place. And I've never been able to find any information on it. found my way out to California started trying to figure out my life. I was on Alias and willing Grace and I modeled for Harley Davidson and I did all these amazing things. And this was about the time that internet dating became a thing. I jumped on the internet dating one day I was

bored and lonely and looking for some kind of companionship. I met this man who lived in Scotland. He was charming and funny with bright blue eyes and a gorgeous smile. I thought he was just wonderful. But he was all the way over in Scotland and I was all the way in Los Angeles. And I was making a life for myself. So we decided that we were just going to be pen pals, we would be friends, we would always be there for each

other. And I watched his little girl grow up in photos. But over the years, he came over to visit me and I went over to go and visit him. And after seven years, we decided that we were in love. And he asked me to get a fiancee visa and move to Scotland to be with him. And it took him seven years to get me there. It took him seven days to start trafficking me. He had my passport, and my driver's license and all of that stuff.

Pretty much immediately after I got off the plane. I said he was going to put them in a small safe for safekeeping, of course. But it was all for control. Instead, he was a police officer. He knew how to control

people. It was within a couple of days after he first started trafficking me that I had designed a plan in my head on how to get out of there. One night when he had a little bit too much whiskey to drink, I decided that I was going to try to con him into giving me back my passport and my debit card and my driver's license so that I could use them to get the money out of my bank account and provide that money to him so that we could

spend it. That was my story. Really what I did was con him into giving me back that stuff. While he was so drunk. He didn't remember doing it so that I could try to buy myself a flight home. As soon as humanly possible. I only had about $2,000 from my account, and an emergency flight out of Scotland cost you way more than that trying to get from Scotland back to LA. It was five days. I was going to have to wait before I

could hop a flight to get out of there. And I spent all but $11 on that ticket. I didn't care if I ate during that flight. I didn't care if I ate leading up to the flight. I just wanted out. I knew that I was going to be homeless when I got back to Los Angeles but I at least had friends there. Maybe somebody would take me in. It was 31 years old. Surely I had some kind of a connection that would be able to help me. He brought

over some people who abused me so badly that I ended up with a severe kidney infection and I missed the flight. It was a non refundable flight so I lost all of that money. And I had no way out. At my absolute darkest it was about a month later. I had finally gotten permission to be able to get out of the house on my own and go for walks but of course he was a police officer. So who was I going to tell? I

didn't have anybody I could turn to for help. I'd never had anybody I could turn to for help. And that was another pattern in my life is not being able to ask people for assistance. So I went down to a church and I sat on the ground of the church and sat next to a grave that was from 1776, which, that's an American independence. I saw that as some kind of a sign. And I sat there and I stopped talking to the grave. And I kept on

praying that somebody, anybody would come and find me. And maybe just ask me what's wrong. Maybe I could finally get some help. But nobody came. Eventually, I got up and I sat on the steps of the church instead. And I sat there and cried for a while and again, prayed that somebody would see me. People could drive by and see me sitting there. Surely somebody would stop and ask me, Are you okay? And nobody stopped. Nobody wanted

to get involved. At the time, I was a smoker. And I had only taken one cigarette with me that day, because I knew it was going to be my last. Eventually, I got up. And I walked to the train station. My plan was to wait for the next train, and then wander down the tracks and commit suicide. I sat there and lit my cigarette. And a man walked out onto the platform. And he asked me for a light and I handed him my matches.

And I told him, he could keep them, I wouldn't be needing them anymore. And I did this specifically because I wanted him to ask me, Why is everything okay? But he didn't. He didn't ask, he just looked at me, and he not and he says, I miss my last one, too. He handed me back my matches, stick them back on my bucket. And then he had a little boy that walked out on that platform with him and walked up to him, and he held

his hand. And I saw this kid, he was probably about four. And I remembered being four, I remembered how innocent I was and how my innocence was stolen away from me at that age. And as I was sitting there looking at that kid, I knew I couldn't do this to this kid. I could not take away his innocence the way so many people had done to me. I had been hurt so many times, the last thing I wanted to do was leave this world by

hurting other people. It took me about 20 seconds to realize that I wasn't running toward the train, I was running back toward my prison. And the whole time, I was happy. Because I knew that if I was going to live through this, if I was going to walk away from what I had planned on doing, when I left that day, there had to be some greater purpose for my life, there had to be more than what I had experienced all this time,

all this pain. Within a month, I had formed another plan. I had been doing so much research over my years trying to understand these patterns and why these things continually happened to me and trying to break these cycles. I had studied so much psychology on my own, I learned about something that used to be called Stockholm Syndrome. It's recently been renamed as trauma bonding. And I knew that this man

that was trafficking me would also be familiar with trauma bonding, again, because he was a police officer, he would understand the basic psychology behind him. I needed to convince him that I was truly so in love with him that the abuse didn't matter. I would do anything for him. But if I overstayed my visa, I could get kicked out of the UK and never allowed to come back. And that would be terrible. And he could

lose his job as a police officer. And we certainly wouldn't want that, would we? But if he sent me back, I could spend six months back in LA. And then I could come back to Scotland and I could come back in time for Christmas and it would be our first Christmas together. And wouldn't that be wonderful. Within two hours, I had round trip flight. But the attacks didn't stop. There. He kept on coming after me. He came

and tried to find me when I was still in Los Angeles. Finally I left la in 2016 I moved out to Colorado. And I tried to start a new life. I was trying to live a nice quiet life and kind of hiding from the public eye and I didn't want people to know who I was anymore. And then happened again he attacked me. In 2019. I found out that he had taken all these different photos and videos that he had taken of me being raped. And he put

them all on a pornography website. And he made me famous to the point where somebody recognized me in the grocery store, not for being on Alias or willing grace or modeling for Harley Davidson or any of the cool things that I'd ever done, but for being raped on a porno If your website, it was humiliating, I had no idea what to do. I reached out to an anti trafficking organization out here that I was already

familiar with. And I just kind of told them briefly what was going on. I was at work when all of this happened, I was a blubbering mess. I have no idea how those people understood what I was saying through the tears. But they immediately got me connected with a therapist, to be able to help me start getting through all of this stuff, and to kind of process it and figure it all out. But they also put me in touch

with an organization out here that pairs human trafficking survivors with legal services pro bono. And this legal service that they paired me with was a law firm in New York City, who volunteered to start reaching out to the different pornography websites, and there were dozens to have all of this stuff pulled down. And every single time they pulled one down, another one would go up. And I started to realize that I was

fighting an uphill battle. I didn't know if this was ever going to be completely addressed. But that if people were going to keep finding me, because he also included my social media information with all of these

photos and videos, they needed to understand why they were finding me. So in 2018, when I sat down in an anti trafficking conference for the first time, and they defined what human trafficking was, and I started to understand what it was, all these little wheels and gears started clicking into place, and 2019, when he attacked, attacked me with the pornography, I started to understand that what he had done to me was

human trafficking. And in 2020, I wrote my autobiography as a survivor of human trafficking. It was published in 2021, on my 10 year anniversary of freedom from trafficking. And a month later is when I met my husband, if I hadn't done the hard work, to be able to go through the therapy, and to fight, and to learn how to speak out and to find that lion in my lungs, this is roaring to get out, and to show the world that He

will never beat me. I never would have this incredible life, and this amazing marriage that I have now with somebody that I call the most patient man I've ever known in my life, because he would have to be. But he says that I'm the only person on the planet has ever accused him of being a patient, man.

them also. But it's going to be less hard work because I've already done the research. It's all about educating ourselves. So we need to understand what trauma is where we are in the stages of trauma, what trauma reactions we might have, what the long term consequences are of not fighting back against these trauma reactions, and how to fight back against them to have a better healthier life and how to build these

healthy boundaries. All of this stuff is so important. It's really rewarding for me to have somebody reach out and tell me, you've made a difference.